Unfinished Business
by WhiteHare
Summary: Mitchell finds a very small, very stroppy little ghost wandering the hospital corridors.  Why did she resist going through her door, and can the supernatural friends get her to pass over?  Set post-Saul, pre-facility S2.
1. Chapter 1

**Usual disclaimer - Being Human doesn't belong to me, blah blah. I'm not making any money from this, just having fun, blah blah. You know how it goes, now. Anyway, I'm not worth sueing.**

**This fic was meant to have Annie as the MC, but apparently no-one told Mitchell this, so if you lot wouldn't mind distracting him with a bottle of Archers and some cigs while Annie gets to play, I'd be obliged.**

**Thanks to mogue for beta reading. **

**If you like it please leave a review. Favouriting it is lovely, and I appreciate it, but reviews are best - thanks!**

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><p>It was the school holidays, so the queues weren't as long as they might have been, mostly commuters sitting in the traffic jam in the run up to the accident. Christina and her daughter had set off early, taking advantage of a forecast of fine weather to have a nice day out in the New Forest, just the two of them. Their picnic was in the boot – a wicker basket and tartan travel rug that screamed Enid Blyton and long hot days in the great outdoors.<p>

They hadn't got far from home when it happened: run off the road by a driver who thought the law banning the use of mobile phones while driving didn't apply to him, their car landing upside down in a ditch.

Eight year old Rosie was in the back. They had found her hanging from the lap belt with her long frizzy blonde bunches dangling down. She had slipped the shoulder strap off to get more comfortable as she read Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban for the third time – a fatal mistake, although the emergency workers hadn't given up on her yet. The faces of the firemen were grim as they struggled to release her from the mangled metal of the crumpled car. They had seen this played out too many times before to be outwardly moved, yet as they went about their jobs with their usual professionalism each one thought of his own children safe at home.

Her mother was in slightly better shape – she at least had been wearing her seat belt correctly – but blood was dripping from a gash in her head and the emergency workers were worried about possible neck damage: the car had dropped several feet after it rolled.

It was a weird feeling, Rosie decided, watching herself being cut out. She had found herself standing on the soft verge, her trainers mud-splattered and the reek of diesel in her nostrils, watching curiously as the activity went on around her. The roadside looked like a scene from a TV show: firemen with cutting equipment and paramedics working feverishly to save her and her mother; two ambulances with blue lights still flashing, although the sirens were silenced now. Rosie vaguely remembered hearing them as their banshee wails wove their way through the queues of traffic to the accident. She didn't remember much after that; she had felt suddenly sleepy.

She gingerly crossed the verge, cautious on the slippery mud and watched the paramedic work on her mother. She was pale and there was a lot of blood; Rosie didn't like blood much, but she couldn't tear her eyes away from the sticky streak down her mother's forehead. They had strapped her to a body board and there were tubes everywhere. Just like Casualty, but a lot scarier in real life. A lot scarier when it was mum underneath all those tubes.

Rosie gulped and moved away. She felt a bit woozy. Once someone had had a nose bleed in assembly and she had thrown up all over Danny Westbridge. Maybe looking at the blood hadn't been a good idea.

The paramedic working on her mum looked up and said, "This one's ready to go, Tom. Let's get her in." He checked the oxygen mask over her mother's mouth and nose, double-checked the line from the drip he had set up, and they slid her carefully into the yawning mouth of the ambulance.

Rosie made to follow her mother into the vehicle, but pulled up short as she felt a sickening lurch and the ground seemed to shift beneath her feet. There was another heave and a pull at the base of her abdomen as the efforts of the emergency services seemed to be paying off and her body tried to reclaim her spirit from wherever it had wandered to. She couldn't go back now – not now – not with her mother so pale and frail on the stretcher. Rosie concentrated as hard as she could to bring the scene back into focus, anchoring herself with an enormous act of will. She looked at herself in the back of the car. However she was doing it – being in two places at once – she had to carry on, at least until she was sure that her mother was safe.

Rosie tried to force herself to run to the ambulance, but her feet stayed rooted to the spot. She couldn't seem to get any closer than she was – or was it herself that she couldn't move away from? Could she only go so far from the figure in the back of the car?

The door of the ambulance slammed shut with her mother inside and the vehicle drew away, the eerie wail of the siren cutting through the morning air once again as it began its desperate journey back to Bristol General.

"Noooo!" Rosie watched despairingly as the ambulance drew away. How would she ever find her mum again now? She slumped to the ground, not caring about the mud she was getting all over her jeans. Her head was spinning, but she wouldn't fight it this time. She was tired...so tired. Maybe if she just laid down for a moment...

"We're losing her. Oh jeez, we're losing her."

The door that appeared in front of Rosie was white and panelled, just like her bedroom door at home, even down to the white plaque with "Rosie's Room" on it. She stepped hesitantly forward, fingers outstretched in wonder to touch her name. As if she had triggered it, the door swung open, a blinding white light shining from the other side. Rosie thought she could hear voices whispering to her from beyond the door. It was creepy: creepier than Dr Who even, and it scared her.

She screwed up her eyes and retreated a few paces. She wasn't sure that she should go through this door to who-knew-where, no matter how much she was drawn to it. Mum had bashed it into her from when she was tiny that she shouldn't go anywhere without telling her first and mum was... Well, she couldn't tell her right now, that was for sure. She shuddered, suddenly cold, wishing she had had the chance to grab her coat from the back seat. She chafed her hands and wrapped her arms about herself; the Jack Wills t-shirt that had been comfortable in the car with the heater on now didn't seem like such a good idea by the roadside on a cool April morning.

The compulsion to go through the door was almost overwhelming, but Rosie was a stubborn little girl. "She knows her own mind," her teacher had said to mum last parents' evening; she had heard mum telling dad that on the phone afterwards. She had to find her mum – make sure she was alright.

"You can whisper all you want, I'm not going through," she said out loud, and the voices stopped for a moment, before resuming their chattering – imploring her, pleading with her. "I'm going to find my mum."

She had been freed from the seat now and the paramedics were gently placing her in the back of the ambulance. This was weird – how could she see herself over there but walk and talk over here? She jumped up into the ambulance and perched on the bench seat along the side. That was weird, she thought, she could have sworn the ambulance door closed _through_ her. She shivered again, not just from the cold this time. What on earth was going on?

ooooooooo

They wheeled the trolley in quickly, applying chest compressions and talking in staccato bursts as they walked. "RTA. Driving licence in her handbag gives her name as Christina McNally, age thirty four. Possible neck and back injuries. Went into asystolic arrest en route. Intubated. She's had eight milligrams of adrenaline and three milligrams of atropine so far. The little girl in the car with her has been called at the scene."

George watched the scene from afar, catching odd bits of the conversation. How did that work then? Dying at the roadside? Did a door open up beside the M32, or what? Doors must be opening all the time around here - ICU, geriatrics, SCBU – but the thought of a door appearing from nowhere and hovering in mid air on a hard shoulder freaked him out. How did babies get through their doors, he wondered? Did someone have to come through to get them? Doors wouldn't just open for the very young and the very old, either. There would be others going before their time. Young, fit and healthy – taken by accidents or... he shuddered...taken by people like him. Him and Mitchell. He turned the wheelchair he was pushing and headed for the lift. Better not to think about things like that. That way lay madness.

ooooooooo

The ambulance had gone straight to the rear of the hospital and Rosie had been put on a trolley and wheeled swiftly into the mortuary entrance. She had tried to follow the trolley – this was confusing, there being two of her, she wished she could work it out – but the door had slammed shut and there was a keypad on the door. She tried a couple of numbers – her birthday, her mum's birthday – but they didn't work and she followed the path round to the front of the hospital and made for the main entrance.

She got quite flustered trying to dodge round all the people bustling around outside the hospital and along the corridors. She'd been polite, remembering her "excuse me"s and her "after you"s, but all that had got her was angry and frustrated. All these adults were obviously too busy or too important to help a little girl find her way back to where she was meant to be.

Even when she tried stopping someone and asking, "Excuse me, I've lost my mum, can you help me find her?" they ignored her and carried on walking. How rude, she thought. I'm not going to be a doctor or a nurse if they are all this rude. Mum would have killed her if she'd just ignored someone like that.

She tried various corridors, trying to read the signs on the walls, but most of them meant nothing to her. Haematology? Obstetrics? Gynaecology? What on earth did they all mean? She was a good reader, but she couldn't figure out where her mum would be at all.

In the end, she sat on a seat in the corridor and cried. Surely someone would help her if she did that and if they didn't at least she'd feel better after a while. "Nothing like a good cry," her mum always says, usually when she and Rosie are unhappy about daddy being away. So she sat by herself and let the scared, lonely tears fall.

ooooooooo

Mitchell pushed his bucket down the corridor. He did that most days. A drunk had puked up and it wasn't even the evening yet. That happened most days too. He sighed and checked his watch. Still a while before he could go home and drink his own beer instead of mopping the regurgitated stuff off the floor tiles, but at least he was due a break soon. Not for the first time he wished that his need for anonymity, for a job that required the minimum of qualifications and references could have led him somewhere other than the shitty job of hospital cleaner.

As usual, he had shut most of his brain off, wiping the floor mindlessly and blocking out his surroundings – it was the only way he could get through the day. It helped him tune out the sounds of humanity too: the hearts beating, the blood rushing. Sometimes he feared his nature would overwhelm him and then the pulse of the hospital pounded in his ears like a single organism taunting him with its life force.

As he swish, swish, swished with the mop, a noise gradually wormed its way into his consciousness. It was the sound of crying – a child by the sounds of it – and when the muffled sobs finally became a mournful wail, his mental processes clicked back in and he started to pay attention.

There was a kid sitting on one of the seats in the corridor: a little girl, not very old, eight or nine maybe – small enough that her legs dangled from the seat without touching the floor except by the very tips of her toes. She had long hair in bunches that were coming loose, the odd strand of hair falling over a face that was wet with tears.

Why was nobody helping? He looked up and down the corridor. There were two or three nurses milling around a notice board, a porter pushing an elderly patient in a wheelchair and a couple of people visiting nearby wards. All of them close enough to help – why was nobody seeing to the kid?

Damn it. Since Bernie he was wary of having anything to do with kids, far less unattended small girls. Too many people accused of doing stuff to children when they were only trying to help. He looked around anxiously – no, he wasn't prepared to risk it. The nurses at the notice board – one of them looked familiar. He racked his brains. Vicky, that was her name. He wandered over.

"Hey, Vicky. There's a kid down the corridor crying for her mum. I think she's got lost somehow. I'd go and help but I'm just off on my break and... you know... might be better if a woman sees to her."

"Sure, Mitchell," she tilted her head to one side and smiled at him, "I'll go and see if I can help."

"Yeah... thanks," and as he strolled down the corridor he was aware of three pairs of eyes following him. If they wanted to ogle his arse in regulation hospital scrubs then good luck to them – they were hardly what he'd call flattering. Despite that, he was aware of a certain swagger creeping into his walk; he was a vampire after all, he was meant to be arrogant. And trying to remain inconspicuous among humans didn't mean he didn't like female attention every now and again.

ooooooooo

Up in the intensive care unit, Christina McNally was also the subject of much attention from nurses. The steady bleep, bleep of the monitor was testament to the success of the medics in bringing her back from the brink of death, but she wasn't out of the woods yet - not by a long chalk.

The doctors were concerned about her head injuries and were keeping her sedated while they scheduled MRI and CT scans for her and the admissions people went through her records and her mobile phone searching for contact details. Whoever the search threw up was about to have their day ruined.


	2. Chapter 2

**If you like it, please leave a review. I'm loving the favourite story/story alert notices I'm getting, but reviews are even nicer! :)**

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><p>Mitchell settled at a table in the cafe. He gulped down a can of Red Bull and chased it with a black coffee – normally he'd just have one or the other but he'd worked a double shift to cover for sickness and he needed the caffeine. Norovirus was working its way round again, so even more vomit for him to mop up than usual. Thank goodness vampires weren't susceptible to human viruses. The extra shifts brought more money in his pay packet, and that was always welcome, now that he'd cut himself off from Herrick. No chance of an extravagant lifestyle on minimum wage – his days of partying in Paris, Berlin and Vienna were long gone.<p>

Vicky brushed past his chair, a can of diet Coke in her hand; her stimulant of choice – the whole damn place ran on caffeine and chocolate. She looked at the paper cup and the can in front of him. "You'll not sleep tonight." A slight smile and she met his eyes briefly. Was she flirting with him?

"Yeah, I don't get a lot of sleep." Let her make of that what she would. "Did you find the kid?"

A quick shake of the head. "No, she wasn't there. Maybe her mum found her. It's easy to get lost in here if you wander off – all the corridors look the same." She fiddled with her ID badge – a nervous gesture that he didn't miss – then tucked a stray tendril of hair behind her ear and smoothed out the creases in her scrubs. "You doing anything tonight?" A shy flick of her eyes across his face showed him what that had cost her.

"I... ah..." Let her down gently, Mitchell. He wasn't about to risk another nurse going missing – not without Herrick around to quietly brush over the tracks that would lead the police to his door.

"My house mate and I are staying in tonight. We're...um...watching the football over a few beers." Yes, football and beer – that should be laddish enough to put her off. "And then an early night. I've pulled a double shift today and I'm shattered."

The corners of her eyes creased as she looked at him, wondering if he was feeding her a line. "Who's playing?"

"Huh?"

"The football. Who's playing?"

"Liverpool and...um..." Oh hell, how had he got into this? "Barcelona." Did that sound convincing enough? Barcelona had a football team, didn't they? Please God, don't let her be a football fan. He was turning into as bad a liar as George, and heaven knew George was bad enough.

"OK, maybe another time. Funny, didn't have you down as a football fan."

"No? Love it. Can't get enough. Another time, maybe?"

"Yeah, another time."

He had a feeling he hadn't fooled her. Not one little bit.

ooooooooo

Rosie finally decided that people in hospitals weren't nice.

She had sat on her chair crying for ever such a long time and no-one had even stopped to see if she was alright. Lots of people had walked past. Surely they couldn't all be too busy to help her?

Oh well, if no-one would help her then she'd have to find her mum by herself, wouldn't she? If she had to look in all the wards, one at a time, till she found her, she would find her eventually. She was a stubborn little thing. Rosie slid to the floor, drew shaky fingers through bedraggled bunches, and set off at random down the nearest corridor. _Wherever you are, mum, I'm coming to find you._

ooooooooo

In the office, the computer had come up with the name Kieran McNally as next of kin listed against the records of both Christina and Rosie, and a check of Christina's phone had found "Kieran Mobile" in its phone book.

The admissions secretary had the all clear to make the call. Although she had made this type of phone call more often than she cared to recall, she still hated it. Her fingers trembled and her stomach churned as she punched in the number and waited for the ringing tone. Times like these she hated her job – giving bad news to unsuspecting people.

The phone rang, and rang, and rang...

ooooooooo

Mitchell felt obliged to go back and check for himself. No, she had gone all right, and he resumed his cleaning, zipping the polisher over the floor and thinking of anything but what he was doing.

A couple of corridors later, as he passed the door to ward 7, he could hear that plaintive little voice calling for her mum again. Peeping round the corner he could see her, trying to attract the attention of the ward sister and getting more and more distraught with each attempt. Just as he was about to call to her to ask why she was ignoring the kid, the sister turned and walked straight through the crying child.

Ah, crap, that explained a lot. Why Vicky couldn't find her, for starters. Why he could see and hear her and no-one else could.

What the hell was a little ghost doing wandering around the hospital? And why did he bother drinking Red Bull and coffee when he evidently still had the mental capacity of a woodlouse – he should have worked that out sooner. God, he needed sleep. Even the undead got tired on double shifts.

OK. This could be tricky. He needed to attract her attention without it looking like he was going completely insane and talking to himself. He leaned round the door again and tried to catch her eye, "Pssstt!" Several pairs of eyes swivelled towards him and he ducked back round the door frame, peeping back a few seconds later to see a small girl looking curiously towards him. He jerked his head towards the corridor and mouthed, "C'mere!" She glanced around the other adults in the ward, then back to him. He beckoned to her and she joined him in the corridor.

"You need to come with me."

Her nose screwed up as she looked at him suspiciously. "My mum says I mustn't go anywhere with strangers."

"What's your name, kid?"

"My mum says I mustn't tell strangers my name either."

He sighed. This was going to be harder than he had thought. "My name's Mitchell, so I'm not a stranger any more, right? What's your name?"

"My mum says I should scream if anyone tries to talk to me that I don't want talking to me."

Great. Not just a ghost, but an unintentionally smartassed ghost.

He couldn't stand here talking to himself – someone would notice sooner or later. "I'm too tired for this," he muttered, "Scream away, Lisa - see where that gets you. I'll be back when you've worked out that I'm the only person around here who can actually see you." He stalked off down the corridor, only vaguely aware of a small presence tagging along behind him.

ooooooooo

Kieran McNally woke up and felt for his phone by the bedside. It was normally in the same place, right next to the lamp, but it wasn't there. What the heck time was it anyway? God, he felt naked without his phone.

Technically of course, he _was_ naked, as was the blue-eyed brunette in the bed beside him. He watched her sleeping, a smile flickering about the corners of her mouth, but what the hell was she doing in his bed? He swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat up, groaning as his head swam and a bolt of pain shot across his forehead.

Memory started to return – Alicia from the office, a dinner out at the new fish restaurant in town (oysters of course) and lots and lots of good wine. His head would testify to how much wine he had drunk. Damn, but he needed a coffee – strong and black and sweet would do him a power of good.

His phone was probably discarded somewhere between the front door and the bedroom, depending on which pocket it had been in and in which order his clothes had come off when they got home. How could he have been so stupid? Cheating on his wife and an office romance both came pretty high up on his list of things never to do, especially in the circumstances. He was playing with fire.

Her eyes flickered open. "Good morning, do you fancy a coffee?"

"Hmmmm?" She murmured drowsily, favouring him with a slow contented smile.

"Stay right there, I'll go and put the machine on." He needed to get away from her. The kitchen wasn't far enough, but it was a start.

"What's the hurry?"

"Well, work for one thing. I'm late enough as it is." Several months down the line he was still very much the new boy at the European Court in Brussels and he didn't want to give them any cause for complaint. The person who had recruited him needed him in that post – he had made that perfectly clear.

She reached out and caught his arm, flinging back the duvet and patting the bed beside her invitingly. "You're cold. Come back to bed. It's warm in here."

"I'm always cold. Bad circulation." He rubbed half-heartedly at his arms, trying to chafe some warmth back into them, with little success, then took a robe from the peg on the bathroom door and pulled it on.

Damn. Last night had been a big mistake and it was going to take all of his tact and diplomacy to get himself out of this one. He couldn't get himself involved; it was too risky. He'd taken a big enough chance last night as it was, although he seemed to have got away with it, thank God. A man in his position couldn't take risks like this – he had to be a lot more careful.

He lurched towards the kitchen wondering how quickly he could get her out without her making a scene. The last thing he needed was an hysterical woman in his flat. Once again he wondered how he had been so stupid as to get himself into this situation.

In his trouser pocket downstairs, Kieran's phone screen flashed the message : "three missed calls".

ooooooooo

"Oh my God, she's a ghost." Nina stared in astonishment at the girl, then back at Mitchell. Mitchell knew that he wasn't Nina's cup of tea, especially since she had been infected – somehow that was his fault, not George's - but he needed someone who could get access to hospital records. And while Nina hadn't really accepted that she was now part of the supernatural world, she could at least see the child who was fidgeting between them.

"Yeah, a freaking gobby one at that. Who won't talk to strangers. Jesus." He rolled his eyes to show what he thought of that.

The child looked sternly up at him. "I'd get told off if I said things like that. My mum says it's not clever to use bad language."

Nina squatted down to talk to the child at eye level. "I'm not a stranger. I'm a nurse here at the hospital, so I help people. I can help you, if you let me."

The child looked at Nina thoughtfully, sizing her up, then glanced sideways at Mitchell. She seemed to decide that Nina was the safer option. "I need to find my mum. They took her away in an ambulance and I've looked everywhere for her. I don't know where she's gone." Slow tears started to trickle down her cheeks once more.

"Ok, I think I can find out for you. What's your name and how old are you?

"I'm Rosie McNally and I'm eight and a quarter."

"And what's your mum's name?"

"Christina."

"Christina McNally?" The child gave a little nod and a sniff then wiped her nose with the back of her hand.

Nina pulled Mitchell aside. "When do you get off shift?"

"I'm pretty much due off – five, ten minutes."

"OK, take her home, have Annie look after her. I'll see if I can find out what's happened to her mother. I'll end up losing my job snooping around people's records like this." She glared at him, "You owe me big time for this, Mitchell."

"Yeah. Thanks, Nina." His thanks were as heartfelt as he could make them in the circumstances, but still sounded insincere to him. He turned to Rosie and took her arm. It felt strangely insubstantial – a bit like Annie did when he hugged her. "Come with me."

Rosie looked him up and down and let out the previously promised scream.

"Will ya shut the heck up, Matilda? There are precisely three people in this hospital who can hear you. One of them's me, one of them's her and the other one isn't here. And none of us are listening." Mitchell dragged his fingers through his hair and turned away in exasperation.

Nina narrowed her eyes. "Have you been drinking Red Bull again? You know it makes you cranky." A satisfied half-smile crossed her face as Mitchell left for the locker room, a small and somewhat bedraggled-looking ghost trailing miserably a few yards after him.

ooooooooo

Annie's rather less oppositional manner won Rosie over where Mitchell had spectacularly failed. He had stalked up the hill, Rosie trotting along behind him trying to keep up with the pace he set on his long legs. He hadn't waited for her to follow her in the door, just left it standing open enough for her to peep around it, finally creeping in after him to be greeted by Annie's warm smile and offer of pride of place on their sofa.

The child was soon established in front of the TV and Mitchell and Annie discussed the situation in low voices in the kitchen, Annie scuttling around making endless cups of tea – a sure sign that she was agitated. Mitchell nursed a mug at the kitchen table, keeping half an eye on the girl in the room beyond.

"She is stuck with a load of strangers and scared – she's obviously not going to react well. And I can't see why you are being so horrible to her – you were really sweet with Bernie." She bit her lip as Mitchell's face darkened at the mention of the boy. She knew Mitchell still blamed himself for Bernie's death; that incident had been mostly to blame for Mitchell going back to the vampires some time before.

"Bernie was a cool kid. She's an annoying, stroppy little brat."

Yes, thought Annie, and Bernie idolised you – put you on a pedestal. Rosie isn't doing that, so she's not as appealing.

"So how come she's looking for her mum? Why wasn't there a door? Shouldn't someone make sure a child gets across safely? Did they forget her?"

"I don't know all the supernatural rules, Annie. Maybe whoever should've made sure she got through OK was on his tea break, or off having a pee – I dunno. Vampire rules I'm pretty hot on; ghost rules are a bit of a grey area for me."

"Maybe she has unfinished business here?" Annie knew about that; she had had her own issues to work through.

"How much unfinished business can she have, for Christ's sake? She's _eight_!"

Mitchell's phone rang, its shrill noise cutting through the conversation.

"Phone's ringing!" called Rosie from the front room.

"Yeah, they do that," grumbled Mitchell, snatching up his jacket from the back of the sofa and fumbling his phone from the pocket. "Yeah?"

"Mitchell? It's Nina."

"Hey. Any joy?" He held the receiver so that Annie too could hear what Nina said.

"There was a Christina McNally admitted earlier this afternoon. Accident on the M32. Her daughter Rosie was pronounced dead at the scene."

"Sounds like our girl," Mitchell glanced at Annie, who nodded almost imperceptibly.

"Christina is in intensive care with head injuries - it's all a bit touch and go. They've found her next of kin on her records – Kieran McNally – so they will be trying to get in touch with him. I'm guessing that's our ghost's dad."

"Right. So now we just have to work out what's keeping Hermione here earthbound and hope that we can find a door and bundle her through it at the right moment."

"That's all I've got, Mitchell. Any more than that and people will start asking why I'm poking around somewhere that's none of my business."

"Cheers, Nina. I appreciate it." She rang off without a goodbye, leaving him staring at the phone. "Yeah, love you more. Jeez."

A key turned in the lock and George let himself in, immediately turning on Mitchell. "Where did you get to? I waited in the locker room for you for ages. Did you leave without me? You know if we're on the same shift we always walk home together." George's voice was laced with indignation.

"Something came up."

"And who the hell is _that?_" George had registered the kid on the sofa and the TV belting out the theme tune to another programme.

"That's kinda what came up."

ooooooooo

Kieran McNally's face was ashen as he hung up. The hospital staff had been as delicate with him as they could, but all the gentleness and sympathetic words couldn't mask the fact that they had just told him that his only child was dead. He closed his eyes and covered his face with his hands, trying to block out the world of pain into which he had suddenly fallen.

Alicia sat cautiously on the bed beside him and held out a glass of whisky. She shouldn't be there, he thought wildly. He barely knew her – she shouldn't be sharing the worst moment of his life.

"She was only a child; she can't be dead. Oh Rosie, baby. My sweet, sweet girl." His shoulders shook as the shock and grief hit him. He took the glass in a shaking hand and guided it to his lips. Barely knowing what he was doing, he threw the amber liquid down his throat with one rasping, burning gulp.

"What happened?" Her voice was cautious, the intimacy they had shared the night before gone – she was an outsider, intruding on his grief, unsure whether to stay or to go.

His finger circled the rim of the glass. "They were in a car accident. Rosie had internal injuries and never made it to the hospital. Christina is critical in intensive care. I'll call work – tell them I won't be in for a few days." His eyes were bleak as he met her gaze. "I'll need to get Alan to take over the case from me, see if he can...if he can..." His voice trailed off – he wasn't thinking straight.

She gave his shoulder a comforting squeeze. "I'll call the airport and check the earliest flight they have available. Bristol, yes?"

He'd meant to go home for Rosie's birthday, but somehow it hadn't happened: the new job and everything, he'd told himself. He had called her on the phone, but that hadn't been the same and he knew he had hurt her. He'd been a crap dad to her, but she'd loved him anyway.

He could hear Alicia talking on the land line downstairs, calling the airport with the briskly efficient manner she used at work. He sat on the side of the bed and held his head in his hands, his shoulders shaking convulsively as he let the tears overwhelm him.

When he'd cried enough to be able to function again, he got his suitcase down from the top of the wardrobe and packed it mechanically: shirts, socks, boxers. Finally he put in his best dark suit and shoes that were usually reserved for weddings, christenings...and funerals.


	3. Chapter 3

**Thanks for waiting - back from my hols and jetlagged so if there are more mistakes than usual blame the earth's rotation. :)**

**Please leave a review if you like it. Thanks.**

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><p>George was struggling to get his head around what Annie and Mitchell were telling him. Leastways, Mitchell was doing most of the explaining while Annie was brewing tea as if her very existence depended on it.<p>

"So she was just wandering around in the hospital?"

"Yes, and no-one could see her, of course, so the kid was getting more and more frantic. What else could I do?" Mitchell took a biscuit from the plate, dunked it and ate it in a single mouthful.

"So you went to Nina? God, Mitchell, what did you go to Nina for? You know we're about her least favourite people right now."

"Mainly because no-one else was about to go through admissions records on a cleaner's say so," mumbled Mitchell round the biscuit. "She was the logical choice, George." And Nina was part of the supernatural world that they inhabited too, no matter how hard she tried to forget that. Her own safety relied on all of them trusting each other – she might not like it, but she accepted it at least.

"So if this Kieran McNally is her dad..." George's eyes creased at the corners as he considered the implications.

"We wait for him to turn up at the hospital and we hand her over. Then she's his problem."

"But he won't be able to see her any more than anyone else could."

"Shit!" He hadn't thought of that. Sixteen straight hours at work really had hammered his mental faculties.

"Mitchell! Language!" Annie jerked her head towards Rosie. "Child present."

"Damn! I mean – hell, Annie. What are we gonna do with her? We can't baby sit some ghost kid." Annie flashed another warning look at him. Yeah, OK, so the kid didn't know she was a ghost yet, but did they really have to child mind her until they could figure out what to do? "God, imagine the telly on bloody CBBC all day. I'd kill meself, if I wasn't already dead. Endless reruns of Tracy bloody Beaker."

Rosie turned from the screen and shouted towards the kitchen. "Can I have a biscuit?"

"No, Rosie," Annie called back.

"How about a bag of crisps? Mum always lets me have a biscuit or a bag of crisps when I'm watching TV."

"But that's so unhealthy! Tell her, Mitchell. Full of fat and sugar and stuff."

"I don't think she needs to worry about healthy eating now, Annie. In fact I don't think she needs to worry about eating at all, if you get my drift." He raised an eyebrow meaningfully at her. "And maybe you should be the one to explain why she doesn't get any more biscuits - ever."

Annie could take care of this particular situation. He'd been there for Bernie, after all. Talking the youngster through what had happened to him and what his life was going to be like was probably the hardest thing he'd ever done. And Bernie had been almost pathetically grateful. Mitchell had turned him into a monster and he'd been _grateful_? What the hell had that been about? No, vampires he could handle, but Annie would have to do the birds and the bees talk with the ghost. He was off the hook this time.

ooooooooo

Kieran hated flying. He hated being crammed into a long tin can with hundreds of other people, breathing their recycled air. The sounds and smells of them repulsed him, and he could hardly move without touching the person jammed into the seat next to him, who had already won the armrest battle. He was really struggling – eyes shut tight in an attempt to conquer his rising panic. He put his earphones firmly into his ears and tried to block everyone out – his legs sticking out into the gangway in a vain attempt at getting some personal space.

The flight attendant touched his shoulder gently, "Excuse me, sir, but we need to get the trolley down the aisle." Her expression became concerned as she registered the tension in his face, the sweat standing out on his brow. "Are you all right?"

"I'm not a good flyer," he mumbled, "Claustrophobia or panic attacks or something, I guess. Can I get a whisky and water, please? And a sandwich. That normally helps. Actually, make that two sandwiches."

He did feel better with the booze and the food inside him; his fingers relaxed a little from the vicelike grip on his knee and the throb of the engines covered the murmur of conversation. Even so, he barely held it together until the plane taxied down at Bristol airport.

ooooooooo

Rosie had taken the whole being a ghost thing rather better than Annie had anticipated. She was a bright kid and being able to sit beside herself in the ambulance, to say nothing of suddenly being inaudible and invisible and having people walk straight through her had been a bit of a clue. She had no problem understanding that she was a ghost, it seemed, especially when related to the book she'd been reading at the time of the accident.

"You mean like Moaning Myrtle?"

Mitchell nearly choked on his tea. "Yes, a hell of a LOT like Moaning Myrtle," he spluttered, despite Annie's disapproving looks.

Strangely, being dead was proving a harder concept to get across. Rosie's argument was that dead people just lay there and did nothing, like in Casualty. They did not, she maintained, walk around and talk and watch Tracy Beaker.

The housemates decided that having her accept she was a ghost was enough of a milestone for one day; they would work on the whole dead thing another time. Mitchell in particular was in no mood to flog that particular horse, dead or otherwise ("How the hell are you planning on being a ghost without being dead, Myrtle?") and the others managed to convince him that heading for bed was best for his sanity – and theirs.

Late at night, Annie and Rosie sat together on the sofa talking softly while the house creaked gently and George and Mitchell slept upstairs. Rosie was revelling in being allowed to "stay up late" even though Annie had explained to her that ghosts didn't need to sleep. Rosie was still new enough to the ghost state that it was a novelty to her; for Annie the shine had worn off months ago, long dark nights with no-one to talk to were just mindless tedium to her now and she was enjoying the company, even when that company was a child. As they talked, Rosie gradually got closer and closer, till eventually she was snuggled in beside Annie, taking comfort from the older ghost's soothing presence.

"So I should have gone through the door?" Rosie's forehead creased in concentration as she tried to understand what Annie was telling her.

"Yes, that's what's supposed to happen. But we think there should have been someone there to meet you – to make sure you got through safely. I don't know what went wrong."

"I wouldn't have wanted to go through that door all by myself."

"No-one expected you to, Rosie. We just have to find you your door some other way."

"I really want to be with my mum," the child turned in Annie's embrace and looked up at her, her blue eyes finally trusting. "I'm scared, Annie."

Rosie buried her face deep into Annie's cardigan. Annie drew the child closer and stroked the girl's blonde hair gently. "I know you are, sweetie. I know you are. We'll take care of you – don't you worry."

But something was nagging at the back of her mind. Gradually she realised what was wrong: she was scared too.

"She wants to do what?" George's voice had raised in pitch, a sure sign that his stress levels were increasing.

"She wants to see her mum," Annie repeated patiently, smiling down at the child who stood holding her hand in the kitchen doorway. "I don't think that's an unreasonable thing to ask. I look on it as _unfinished business _myself." She looked meaningfully at them as she said those words, her intent clear.

Mitchell paused, toast halfway to his mouth and raised brown eyes to meet George's. "Could be right, you know, George. This could be what we're after."

George looked uncertainly from one to the other. "Yes, well, you could be right. You could very well be right. But how are you planning to get her there? Her mum's in the intensive care unit, not the cafeteria."

Annie beamed, pulling Rosie in front of her and wrapping her arms tightly around the girl. "That's where you two come in."

George and Mitchell exchanged significant glances. Annie in one of these moods wasn't to be argued with lightly.

"Funny," muttered George, pushing his chair back with a scrape of chair legs against the kitchen floor and grabbing his jacket from where it was draped over the seat. "I had a strange feeling you were going to say that."

ooooooooo

Kieran phoned the hospital from the airport as he waited for his luggage to come round on the carousel.

Christina was out of immediate danger, they told him, although still hooked up to various machines. Yes, her parents had been to see her, but no, the nurse didn't know when they were planning to visit again. He checked the visiting times for the day and figured he had time to check into his hotel and grab some lunch before heading over to the hospital.

They still hadn't told Christina about Rosie – she had been unconscious when she was admitted and they were still keeping her sedated. He supposed it would fall to him to tell her when the time came, and he was dreading it already. Christina and Rosie had been so close and looked like two peas in a pod to boot. "You and mini you" he had called them many times. Rosie had been her life. He had a horrible feeling that Christina would come apart at the seams.

Briefly he considered booking a place on the next plane back to Brussels and opting out altogether but the thought of another flight so soon was enough to put him off.

"Man up, McNally," he thought to himself. "Time to pull yourself together and get through this. You've managed so far, you can manage another few days."

The passengers suddenly surged forward as the first suitcases thumped onto the carousel. Kieran loosened the tie that had suddenly become uncomfortably tight and braced himself to plunge into the fray in search of his bag.

ooooooooo

George had been standing outside the rear entrance of the hospital for a couple of minutes when he spotted Annie and Rosie coming along the road towards him. The pair were chattering happily away together and seemed very contented in each others company. He couldn't remember the last time he'd seen Annie as relaxed and happy, he thought; it suited her.

He did a quick check of the area – no-one in sight to see him apparently talking to himself.

"Hey, you're late."

"Yeah, we stopped off to feed the ducks. We hid under a bridge where no-one would notice the ducks feeding themselves bread, didn't we, Rosie?"

The child's answering smile was as wide as her face, and her eyes shone as she nodded vigorously. "It was fun. I liked feeding the ducklings, but the geese and the swans kept coming and trying to steal the bread from them, poor little things." She beamed up at Annie, "Can we feed them again tomorrow?"

"Yes, I suppose. If you're...still here tomorrow." Annie, George and Mitchell had managed a chat while Rosie had been watching MI High, and had agreed that needing to see that her mother was safe and recovering might well be Rosie's unfinished business, and that she was to be encouraged through the door with all haste, should it appear for her when she saw her mother.

He led them through the hospital, returning greetings from other staff: George Sands was evidently a popular guy. Annie and Rosie trailed behind, Rosie taking every detail of the route with eager eyes, her previous traumatic encounter with the hospital put firmly behind her.

He peeped through the window in the door of ICU, with its white walls and the array of monitors and other equipment festooning the room. Christina lay in one of the beds, dwarfed by the lines and tubes and machinery around her. The nurses bustled around, quietly efficient, keeping an eye on their vulnerable patients.

George tapped on the glass and one of the nurses wheeled round, sucking in a quick gasp as she noticed George by the entrance. She came over, unlocking the door to let him through.

"You made me jump!" she exclaimed. "People normally either have card keys for here or they get buzzed up from reception. We don't often get people knocking."

"Sign of a guilty conscience," commented George nervously, "jumping like that, I mean."

Annie and Rosie slipped silently past him, towards Christina's bedside. Rosie's face paled when she saw her mum, and Annie placed a comforting arm around her shoulders. Rosie rested her head against Annie's side, staring sadly at her mother.

"Can't think of anything I've got to be guilty about, more's the pity. My life is depressingly free of anything like that at the moment." The nurse tipped her head on one side, recognising him at last. "Wait a minute, you're Mitchell's housemate, aren't you? How was the football?"

"Football?"

"Yes, Liverpool-Barcelona. Was it a good game?"

Right. Another one of Mitchell's fabrications, and he'd dumped George right in it. "Yes, very good. End to end stuff. A game of two halves. Both of them...rivetting." George's voice took on its usual note of panic as he tried desperately to remember what little he knew about football and to ignore the pained look and despairing eyeroll from Annie. "How is she doing? Christina McNally?" He hoped the nurse would have reassurance for Rosie, who looked on the verge of tears. Maybe bringing her here hadn't been such a great idea.

"Friend of yours?"

"Friend of a friend," he nodded. "I said I'll look in on her."

"I'm not supposed to talk to anyone but family..." she sounded doubtful.

"I'm the soul of discretion, after all I don't want to lose my job any more than you want to lose yours."

"I suppose it wouldn't hurt. She's holding her own. There doesn't seem to be any lasting damage and they are reducing the sedation gradually. They are hoping she'll be fully conscious in the next day or two and then they can reassess."

"Has her husband been to see her yet?"

"He's flying in from abroad somewhere, they said. I guess he'll get here when he can."

George watched the scene playing out over the nurse's shoulder. Rosie now sitting on the edge of her mother's bed, gently holding her hand so as not to jog the line that ran into the back of it. Annie steadied her with a hand on her back, talking softly to the child to reassure her and rubbing a comforting hand up and down Rosie's arm. He could see Annie watching the walls of the ICU suite, alert for any changes that might hint at Rosie's door appearing, but the stark whiteness of the walls remained unbroken.

"Well, that's good news at least. I'm sure my friend will be pleased to hear it." He raised an eyebrow at Annie, barely daring to move for fear of alerting the nurse that something was up, and she shrugged helplessly back at him. "OK, I'd best go then. I'll maybe pop back another time – get an update. I'll try not to startle you next time. Thanks for your help."

"No problem. You can do something for me in return, though. Tell your mate Mitchell he's a lying shit, will you?"

"Lying shit. Gotcha." George chuckled to himself as he left. Mitchell stirred up many emotions in the opposite sex, but ambivalence was rarely one of them.

He hung around in the corridor, waiting for Annie and Rosie, pacing up and down and sneaking the occasional look through the door. At last he saw Rosie lean across to gently kiss her mum's cheek and then slip down from the high hospital bed.

"Nothing?" asked George as the pair followed a nurse out of the door and joined him in the corridor.

Annie shook her head. She looked stunned – she had convinced herself that this was what would make Rosie's door appear, and was finding it hard to take in that it hadn't worked. "Not so much as a flicker. What do we do now, George? How ever will we find Rosie's door?"


	4. Chapter 4

**Got the rest of this drafted, so will post remaining chapters over the next few days as I get them tidied up.**

**Managed to get Annie to the forefront in this chapter, which is a departure for me, as I'm normally all about JM. Hope you like what I've done with her.**

**Reviews always appreciated. Thanks.**

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><p>Annie and Rosie were having a blast. They had been for a walk after the hospital visit and had discovered a playground in a park not far from the house. Rosie was desperate to play on the swings and slides, just like any other eight year old. The trouble was, when they had arrived there had been some local teenagers hanging around, playing truant from school. They had bottles of cider and were puffing their way through packs of cigarettes and trying to look intimidating. To Annie's eyes they just looked stupid – dumb kids trying to look cool – she wished she could give them a piece of her mind. Tell them that they weren't being so smart, wasting their lives hanging around playgrounds, but of course she couldn't. Probably just as well.<p>

Their language was pretty ripe and Annie was uncomfortable with Rosie hearing it – the words she had pulled Mitchell up for using around the child were mild in comparison with some she was hearing now. To add insult to injury, one of the kids was carving his initials into the wood of one of the benches with a pocket knife, and one of the swings was occupied by a teenage couple, the boy with his tongue seemingly half way down the girl's throat.

"Oh now, that's not on!" commented Annie. "A kids' playground is for kids, not for walking ASBOs to hang around in."

The teenagers started to get a bit concerned when the roundabout started mysteriously turning by itself.

They were seriously freaked out when the swing next to the one the couple were snogging on started to move for all the world as if someone was being pushed on it.

And when the chains on the swings that the pair were sitting on started rattling as if invisible hands were shaking them they left in a hurry – one or two wondering if they had had too much cheap supermarket booze.

Annie chuckled in satisfaction as the teenagers left, gathering their bottles of White Lightning and fleeing the park. Normally she would be more careful, but the chances were that they wouldn't tell anyone – who would believe a bunch of kids saying that a playground was haunted. Everyone would just think they'd been smashed or stoned, after all. Anyway, haunting the house had been fun until the boys moved in and her life took a turn for the better, and it had been a laugh to spook someone again.

Annie went back to pushing Rosie on the swing, Rosie's hair flying around her face as she flew higher and higher. They both laughed as they played – giggling at the faces of the youngsters they had scared away from the park and for the sheer joy of being...alive... almost. It was just as well the teens couldn't hear it – the sound of laughter echoing around the playground as the swing at the end of the row went backwards and forwards, higher and higher.

The chimes of an ice cream van jingled along the road: 'a pizza hut, a pizza hut, Kentucky fried chicken and a pizza hut'. "I'd really like an ice cream," said Rosie wistfully, scuffing her feet along the floor to slow the swing down and bring it to a halt. She knew that she couldn't eat, but her face showed that knowledge and acceptance hadn't quite collided in her mind yet.

"Me too. That's one of the things I really miss about being a ghost, is ice cream. And tea, of course. And chocolate. And I used to love sticky toffee pudding. Owen and I used to go to a little pub..." Annie pulled herself up. When was the last time she had thought about Owen? She certainly wasn't going to start again now – she was so over him, the murdering git.

"Come on." Annie grabbed Rosie's arm, hauling her off the swing and dragging her at a run across the park and to where the ice cream van stood parked at the roadside.

"What are you doing?" asked Rosie. "You said we couldn't eat ice cream."

The ice cream man was waiting to see if anyone would emerge from any of the houses along the street. Annie stood by the counter and smiled winsomely up at him. "Two 99s please, with extra chocolate topping." She winked at Rosie. The man took one last look down the road, then went back to the driver's seat and started the chimes playing again. He drove along the side of the park and headed for the nearby estate where there would be more little kids about at this time of the day.

Empty handed, yet clutching an ice cream each, Annie and Rosie went back to the park and sat on the bench with the partially carved initials of the lad with the knife on it. "Mmmmm," said Annie, "this is nice."

"I liked the chocolate flake best," replied Rosie. "I always used to eat that first and then have the ice cream afterwards."

"Me too. And I'd always bite the end off the bottom of the cone and suck the ice cream through – it was much more fun that way."

"I'll try that," and Rosie held her pretend cone aloft, bit the bottom off and sucked. "You're right, that's a fun way to eat ice cream. It's sort of melty and slurpy."

"Hurry up and eat it," warned Annie, "it's starting to drip and you don't want to get it all down your top."

"No, that's the best part of ghost ice cream," said Rosie, "It never melts and it never runs out, and the chocolate flake is so long it goes right to the moon." Annie had almost forgotten that her little companion was only eight, but that remark brought her back to reality with a bump. So young to die.

Giggling, the two ghosts sat on the bench eating make-believe ice cream and imagining never-ending chocolate flakes, and it struck Annie that even though she'd only known Rosie for a day or so, she was going to miss her when she went.

oooooooooo

Kieran sat by his wife's bedside, holding her hand gently as their daughter had done such a short time before.

"The nurses say to talk to you – that you'll hear my voice even if you can't understand what I'm saying. I'm not sure you really want to hear my voice, after what I've done, but if it helps I'll do it." He rubbed the back of her hand with his thumb. "I'm sorry, Christina, I couldn't stay. I don't know if I can ever explain why, not even to you, but I had good reasons, I promise."

One of the nurses, Vicky she had said her name was, wandered past and checked on Christina, jotting some notes on the clipboard at the foot of her bed. She smiled. "It's OK. Just a routine check, nothing to worry about. They have reduced her sedation again, so you might start noticing her responding to you. If she gets upset or seems in any discomfort at all, come and find me." Her manner was reassuring and Kieran relaxed a little. "I'm sure she's glad you're here."

Kieran wasn't at all convinced she would be. He waited till Vicky was out of earshot and resumed his quiet monologue. "I can't come back you know, not permanently. Maybe not even for visits. It's too risky. Something happened when I got that new job – I haven't even worked it all out myself, but I'm not the same man you married, Christina. I still love you, but I couldn't be with you – you and Rosie. There's no-one else." He pushed the sudden image of Alicia's face firmly to the back of his mind. _Mistake, mistake, mistake_, his mind screamed at him. "I just need not to be with you any more."

ooooooooo

"Oh my goodness, how long have we been out?" It suddenly struck Annie that the shadows were lengthening and the boys would soon be home again. They would be worried if they were both missing from the house; what time was it, anyway?

"Rosie, stay right here, OK? Don't move. I'll be right back." Annie composed herself a moment, then closed her eyes and concentrated. Rosie gasped when Annie disappeared in front of her very eyes, then reappeared a few moments later in the exact same spot.

"What did you do? How did you do that?"

Annie beamed. She had stayed in the house long enough to establish that the boys weren't back yet, but they still needed to get themselves home quickly. "Mitchell calls it rentaghosting. It's from some TV programme he remembers from years ago. Mitchell is...older than he looks." Ghosts were one thing for the kid to get to grips with, but Annie didn't think she'd hit her with vampires quite yet. "I wonder if you could do it. Can you picture the pink house really clearly in your mind?"

Rosie nodded slowly. "I can see the TV and the sofa and the fireplace. Is that clear enough?"

"I don't know. Can you make it so clear that you feel you could reach out and touch it?"

"I think so."

"Well, you picture it that clearly and then sort of think yourself there. You need to think hard, though, with all of you. It's like your mind goes there and your body follows along."

Rosie closed her eyes, her face screwed up with concentration. With the merest whisper of air she disappeared from sight.

"Well that seems to have worked," commented Annie to the world in general, "assuming that she has gone to the pink house and not somewhere else entirely. And that she can get back from wherever she has popped out to. Maybe teaching her this wasn't such a good idea."

With another breath Rosie reappeared, cheeks flushed and eyes wild with excitement. "I did it! That was soooo cool! I imagined the TV and then I was right there! I can rentaghost too."

The pair popped home, Rosie appearing in front of the TV and Annie in the kitchen among her beloved mugs, but it did occur to Annie to wonder whether George and Mitchell would be as thrilled at this latest turn of events as Rosie was.

ooooooooo

During their next nocturnal chats, Rosie opened up yet further to Annie.

Her dad was a lawyer. He had got a new job in Brussels – an important job, her mum had said – and mum and dad had both been thrilled. They had talked about them all moving there and mum had even started checking out English schools in Brussels in case Rosie needed to change school in a hurry.

At first her dad had come home every weekend, excited about his job, but exhausted from the work and the travelling and too tired to do anything much, apart from a drink or two in the pub with his friends or the occasional round of golf. One weekend he'd gone out with his friends on the Saturday and staggered in bedraggled on the Sunday. Her mum had been almost hysterical – her dad was apologetic and upset, but hadn't been able to offer any reasonable explanation for where he had been. He'd started staying away two or three weeks at a time after that and then he had stayed away permanently.

He'd even missed Rosie's birthday, she confided miserably to Annie. Oh, he had phoned her and sent a present, but it had been mum who had arranged the party for her school friends at the local swimming pool, mum who had accepted the condolences of her friends' parents that he was away for her special day and mum who had assured them that he was only away because he was so busy building a better life for them abroad.

That night she had heard mum shouting at him on the phone, accusing him of having a girlfriend in Brussels. Why else, she had asked, would he miss his only child's birthday? It had sounded like dad had tried to protest, but mum had been upset, sobbing down the phone at him, and when she finally hung up she had poured herself a large glass of wine and sat and stared miserably at the muted television set. Rosie had crept downstairs and sat with her arms round her mum.

"It's OK mum. We've still got each other," Rosie had said.

Mum had ruffled her hair and said "My darling girl, always so wise. Whatever would I do without you?"

Rosie had been upset about dad not coming home and often crept into her mum's room at night, crawling into her bed and curling up next to her, wretchedly wishing that everything could be back to normal: that her dad had never got this horrid job that had wrenched them apart.

"I just wanted us all to be a family," she whispered to Annie, "but then something happened." The child fell silent, the cheeky gleam in her eyes that had faded as she told the story finally extinguished.

"What happened, Rosie?" Annie prompted gently.

"He hurt me. He grabbed me by the arm, there." She rolled up her sleeve. "You can't see anything now, but it was a big bruise, this big. You could see the marks of his fingers." She rolled her sleeve down and raised watery eyes to Annie's. "I wore long sleeves for a while and made sure mum didn't see me in the bath till the marks had gone. He scared me, Annie – the look on his face when he did it, it was really scary." She took a long shuddering breath. "When my mum dies, will she come through a door and be with me?"

"Yes, I'm sure she will."

"And when my dad dies, if I don't want to see him I don't have to, right? He's turned creepy."

"I don't think they'd make you see him, honey." A picture of the men with sticks and ropes suddenly appeared in Annie's mind and she shivered. Someone just walked over my grave, she thought absently.

"Just as long as mum and I can be together. That's all I want." Rosie's face was thoughtful.

ooooooooo

When Annie returned to the sofa from the kitchen, Rosie wasn't there. She hunted through the house, calling softly so as not to wake George and Mitchell. She even poked her head round the door of George's room; she was sure Rosie wouldn't be in Mitchell's room – the two had reached an uneasy truce, but Rosie was still wary of the tall vampire.

Eventually, with a sense of foreboding, Annie had to admit to herself that Rosie was nowhere in the house. Panic rising, she decided that she had to wake the others and call an emergency house meeting. Mitchell first – he'd know what to do, for sure.

"Mitchell!" She pounded on his bedroom door, then let herself in. "Mitchell, wake up! She's gone! Rosie's gone!"


	5. Chapter 5

**Thanks to all of you who are still following Rosie's story. There are two more chunks to post after this, so hopefully you'll get the conclusion to it later this week. A bit of a reveal in this chapter - interested to know how many people picked up on the hints.**

**The BH universe belongs to Toby Whithouse, and a jolly fine one it is too!**

**As always, reviews are much appreciated from my regular readers and new friends alike. Thank you. :)**

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><p>"Mitchell, wake up! She's gone! Rosie's gone!"<p>

Annie stood in Mitchell's bedroom doorway, face tear-streaked and anxious. Normally the mess would bother her: the clothes spilling out of the drawers and tumbling across the floor; the discarded sweet wrappers and beer bottles; the assorted detritus of over a century of life. But for now she was focussed on the figure that was emerging from under the duvet, hair chaotic and eyes bleary with disturbed sleep.

"Whaa...? What time is it?"

"It's four o'clock. She's gone, Mitchell. Rosie's nowhere in the house."

He blinked sleepily at her. "Maybe her door came and she left?"

"Without saying goodbye? I was only in the kitchen. She'd have called to say goodbye at least. She was scared of her door last time – she wouldn't have gone without saying something. You get up, I'll go and wake George. We need to find her."

George proved even harder to wake than Mitchell and Annie returned to his room again to make sure he hadn't just rolled over and gone back to sleep. He squeaked at her indignantly as he hopped on one leg pulling his jeans on with one hand while trying to shut the door with the other. "Annie! I'm not even decent!"

"She can't have got far." Mitchell followed Annie down the stairs, pulling on his leather coat and running his fingers sleepily through his dark curls. "Where have you taken her around here?"

"Only to the hospital and to the park." Annie felt happier now – Mitchell was assuming his normal role of calm assuredness, and she could feel her original panic subsiding.

"Good odds she's gone to one of those two places, then. Hospital or park, George?" Mitchell turned to the third housemate who had appeared in the bend of the staircase, still doing up the buckle on his belt.

"Park. I see enough of that damn hospital as it is." He grabbed a coat from the hook by the door, took his mobile from the charger and shoved it into his pocket. "I'll check back in a bit, yes? See if she's found her way home."

The door slammed behind George, but Mitchell lingered, his eyes scanning Annie's face worriedly. "You OK?"

She sniffed and nodded. Just worried about Rosie." Annie worried vaguely whether she should admit what she had taught Rosie to do earlier and decided against it: not now. God, she could be almost anywhere – anywhere she could picture clearly enough, anyway. "Find her for me, Mitchell. Please."

"Are you sure she wouldn't have gone through on her own?"

"I'm sure." She bit her lip. "Mitchell, when she asked me if anyone would be waiting for her on the other side of the door I didn't tell her the whole truth. I didn't tell her about..." Annie hesitated, her hand plucking restlessly at the edge of her grey cardigan.

"You did the right thing, Annie." Mitchell clasped her upper arms and looked urgently into her eyes. "She needs to go through her door. Hell, _we _need her to go through her door. And we don't know that the men with sticks and ropes meet everyone."

"They met me," her voice was bleak, "and they met you. I know they did."

Mitchell turned away, not wanting her to see the pain in his eyes, and swallowed convulsively as he tried to force that particular memory away. Yes, they had met him. When he had died they had been there. They were why he had woken up in a panic on the battlefield - terrified to be a vampire but even more terrified to go back and face them.

"She told me she heard whispering behind the door – that it was scary, it creeped her out. It must have been the men, Mitchell. They were there behind the door waiting for her. We can't send her through to them. She's only a child."

"Damn it, Annie, what can a child have done in eight years? She can't have done anything bad enough to make them interested in her."

"I hadn't done anything bad, Mitchell. Oh, I'd cheated in my geography exam – just a little bit, all those capitals were confusing so I wrote them inside my pencil case - and I'd snogged my mate's boyfriend at her sixteenth birthday party, but nothing that deserved...that."

He cast a baleful glance over his shoulder at her before he left. "We can't tell her. We just can't." He squeezed her arm and headed out, pulling up the collar of his jacket against the night's chill as he tugged the door shut behind him.

She stared at the closed door and whispered, "What if we didn't have to tell her, Mitchell? What if we let her stay?"

ooooooooo

Rosie came back later, shame-faced and scared of her reception. George had checked back in having not found her in the park or anywhere nearby, and he had texted Mitchell to give him the news. Mitchell texted back that he might as well stay at the hospital – it wasn't worth him walking home only to head back there again soon. He'd grab a couple of hours nap somewhere, then down a few coffees and work his shift - all this conveyed in a few characters of text speak. Mitchell was a master of text speak, even if George did occasionally have to call in Annie to try and interpret the jumble of numbers and letters that Mitchell thought comprised communication.

Rosie had glanced up furtively when she heard George's key in the lock, then relaxed visibly when it wasn't Mitchell.

"You're still scared of him, aren't you? Mitchell, I mean. Not George." Annie probed gently.

Rosie nodded.

"He doesn't bite, you know." Well, not you, anyway, she amended silently. "You two just got off on the wrong foot. He's OK when you get to know him."

"He's scary, Annie. There's something different about him." She looked sideways at the older ghost. "You know what it is, don't you? You know what it is and you're not telling me. Is he a ghost too?"

"Sort of. Not exactly. You don't have to be frightened of him, Rosie. He wouldn't hurt you. He only wants to help."

Rosie didn't appear convinced.

"I went to the hospital," she confided quietly. "I rentaghosted to see mum." Her head drooped and her hair shrouded her face. "I was going to pull some of the wires out and see if she'd die. I wanted her to come with me, so we could be safe together and far away when dad came through the door. I sat and watched her for ever such a long time, trying to work out which wires would work best, and if I could do it without the nurses noticing it."

Annie couldn't believe what she was hearing.

Rosie peeked out from behind her hair. "That was bad of me, huh? I didn't do it, but even thinking about it was bad, wasn't it?"

Annie gently cupped Rosie's chin in her hand and lifted the child's face to look into her eyes. "You did nothing wrong, Rosie. You are lonely and afraid and it's natural to want your mum with you." Though maybe not _quite_ like that. "I think if you'd pulled out anything important an alarm or something would have gone off and the nurses would have fixed it, but you heard them say your mum was getting better, didn't you? I don't think she's going to come to you straight away."

"I know. That's why I didn't do anything in the end. She's going to get better and I'll still be dead and I'll go on by myself." She sniffed and wiped her nose on the back of her Jack Wills t-shirt. The face that looked back at Annie was stronger somehow – more resolute. "I thought a lot sitting next to mum in the peace and quiet. I understand that I'm dead, Annie, and I want to go through the door now. I just wish that you could come with me."

"Oh, Rosie," Annie wrapped her arms around the little girl, "you're so brave. Much, much braver than me."

And Annie began to wonder if maybe she was ready for her door now too. Would it take an eight year old to make her accept that?

ooooooooo

By the time his break came around Mitchell was scratchy-eyed and even two cups of cafeteria coffee had done nothing to help him shrug off his interrupted night. He felt grubby, even by his standards: his teeth unbrushed and his face and neck given a cursory rub over with a KFC wet wipe he'd found in the bottom of his rucksack, the wipe woefully inadequate for the job.

He spotted a face he recognised across the cafeteria, and she had spotted him too. Mitchell tried desperately to avert his gaze before they made eye contact, but too late. He couldn't back out now without looking rude.

"Hey, Vicky," tired or not, he flashed his usual disarming smile her way.

"What do _you_ want?"

OK, that was unexpected. Her tone was distinctly hostile. Wrong-footed, he grasped at the first thing to come to mind.

"I've been feeling bad about blowing you out the other day, so I thought I'd see if you were up for a drink when you got off shift?"

"So your housemate didn't pass the message on, then?"

George? Evidently not. "Message?"

"Yeah," she lowered her voice, "telling you you're a lying shit. Christ, Mitchell, do you think you're God's gift to women, or what? Jerk." She pushed past him on her way to an empty table, her diet Coke and bar of chocolate in hand.

That had gone well. In some other universe.

His day could only improve.

She paused just past his table, her body language displaying her conflict – in the end she turned, distaste still evident in her face. "Let's see if _you're_ better at passing on messages, shall we? Tell George his friend had a visitor yesterday. Her husband is back from Belgium, or Holland, or wherever he works. He's due in again later this morning. Thought he might like to know. No reason he shouldn't find out just because his best mate's a git." She continued on her way, dashing a stray lock of hair from her face and trying to conceal the tremble in her hands from him. She'd have managed it too, if the distinctive waft of adrenaline hadn't hit him as she left, but he was too interested in her message to take much notice of her reaction.

Kieran McNally. Bingo.

ooooooooo

A hasty conversation with George when they passed in the corridor saw the two agreeing that they needed to talk to Kieran McNally – see if they could get out of him any hints about why Rosie was still earthbound. Mitchell had never hidden his desire to get Rosie out of the house as quickly as possible and George, while outwardly more sympathetic, as was his nature, was grumpy enough after a night with too little sleep to agree to Mitchell's plans.

Mitchell omitted to mention the other part of his conversation with Vicky. He had never seen himself as God's gift, far from it, but he had to admit that 'lying shit' had a ring of truth to it from time to time. He really didn't need the taunting that his housemate was bound to give him when he heard Vicky's assessment of him: he suspected that George was slightly envious of Mitchell's attractiveness to women and was bound to make the most of this lapse in his superior status.

God only knew what Annie would say when she found out that they'd talked to Kieran, though. She'd grown attached to Rosie and Mitchell didn't think she'd be too upset if they didn't manage to find her door. Mitchell thought he might let George handle that particular conversation.

ooooooooo

He was buzzed into ICU by a nurse he hadn't seen before. Emilia, her name badge said. With an E, not an A. Like Emilia Fox. He stashed that away for future reference. Women liked it when a man remembered their name without prompting.

Damn it, but he was hungry. He hadn't fed for days, he'd lost count how many, and the pulse in her neck played a perfect rhythm that lodged in his head. He swayed on his feet as he struggled to focus his eyes – the ward blurring into soft focus as his head throbbed in time with her heartbeat.

The ward door clicked as the lock released and the door was flung back violently. Vicky stalked onto the ward, her face a picture of annoyance as she ranted at Emilia, oblivious to anyone else around her. "How bloody _dare_ he?" she hissed. "My God, who does he think he _is_? I know you and Alyssa wouldn't kick him out of bed for eating crackers, but for Christ's sake, the _arrogance_ of the man. Thinks he's Clark fucking Gable or something."

She saw him standing quietly off to one side and pulled up short, blushing furiously as she realised she had been swearing like a trooper in front of a visitor.

Vicky was pretty, and angry and upset, her heart beating like a drum. He inhaled deeply, drinking in the aroma of her arousal. He gulped, feeling the tension rising in him...

ooooooooo

Mitchell had hung around outside the ICU for longer than he should have risked, his forbidden mobile phone deep in the pocket of his scrubs. It should have been in his locker – his manager would have something to say about it if he were caught with it on him – but he needed to stay in touch with George in case he managed to talk to Kieran McNally; in case the meeting went off well.

He'd mopped the corridor immediately outside the ward, and around the corner where the lifts were, hoping to spot Kieran when he arrived. How the hell he'd get conversation onto Kieran's dead daughter was a mystery to him though – the man was going to think Mitchell was a raving nutter. Now he leaned on the wall next to the water cooler, downed one paper cup full and refilled it, swallowing the second cup in hardly less time than the first, then taking his time with a third cup. Ah, that was better. He was dehydrated after the coffees. Why did they always keep hospitals so damned hot? And why were water cooler cups so small?

Footsteps clicked along the corridor around the corner and the door of ICU banged shut. Mitchell's head jerked up as he came out of a half doze, spilling a few drops of water down his front. Shit! Had someone come up the stairs instead of using the lift? Damn and blast it – had he missed his chance?

He strode to the door of ICU, cup of water still in hand and peered through the window. Vicky was at one end, talking animatedly to one of the other nurses, but there beside Christina's bed was a man who was a prime contender to be Kieran McNally. He tapped on the glass and beckoned urgently to the nurses to come and let him in.

Vicky stalked across the ward, her face like thunder and when she opened the door and he pushed past her into the ward she was spoiling for a fight. "What the hell are you doing here? I thought I made it perfectly plain that I wanted you to take a hike. This is harassment." Her voice was lowered, but her temperature and heartbeat were raised along with her temper. Mitchell was suddenly very aware of her: the pulse throbbing in her neck and the blood coursing through her veins. His hand shook with the effort of controlling himself as the vampire in him threatened to take over. Icy water splashed down the front of his blue scrubs, the sudden chill as it soaked through the thin material and onto his skin bringing him back to himself. Shit, that had been close.

Nearby someone was struggling with the same sensations, but failing to control them. Mitchell did a mental inventory: he was getting heartbeats from the nurses, from the patients, but not from... The eyes that met Mitchell's from across the ward were solid black, and their owner was advancing on Vicky with fangs descended.

Mitchell launched himself at the man, grasping him by the shoulders and shaking him "Not here!"

He wheeled him round - Vicky mustn't see the man's eyes - and propelled him towards the door and past an aghast Vicky. "Out! Now!"


	6. Flashback

**We will be back with Rosie and Annie very soon, but Kieran was insistent that I show his place in Herrick's scheme of things. **

**And this was supposed to be very short, but took on something of a life of its own. **

**I laughed out loud when Herrick came up with the cricket stump line, so I have first dibs on it in case he ever tells me the story behind it!**

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><p><strong>Several weeks earlier<strong>

The man sitting opposite William Herrick looked stunned: unsurprisingly, perhaps, since he had just learned that he was now a vampire.

Kieran had woken up, wide-eyed and panic stricken, in the depths of a funeral parlour, lying on a table with coffins propped up against the walls around him. The reflex to breathe kicked in and he sucked in a deep, redundant breath. He smelled wood varnish, dust and a pervasive odour that reminded him of school science laboratories.

The man who had introduced himself as Herrick had explained to Kieran about his new status; that the creatures he had believed to be rooted in folklore and Hammer horror were real, stalking the streets of London and Paris and New York and – God help him – of Bristol.

Herrick had run through the basics: sunlight would be uncomfortable for a while, better invest in some good sunglasses. It wouldn't reduce him to ash, however; that _was_ a Hammer thing. Any religious artefacts or consecrated ground were generally out and he wouldn't be able to enter any buildings uninvited. On a less serious note the older vampire assured him that garlic was, as in life, largely down to personal preference. "I think it's safe to say that Count Dracula would have avoided the moules marinieres, just in case, but I'll order them if they are on the menu."

The new vampire watched him, virtually unblinking.

Herrick had seen this reaction before. Shock. Pure shock. They ranted and raved, they became almost catatonic, or they cried like children – they all came to the same place in the end: grim acceptance. And in these first few hours, he believed, the future vampire was formed. Treat them with compassion now and you had them in the palm of your hand with the opportunity to mould them in your image – one reason William Herrick was always careful about where and when he and his colleagues recruited into the vampire ranks.

"I've been watching you for some time," Herrick purred in tones of the greatest satisfaction. "A hot-shot young lawyer, going places, friends in increasingly high places. Just the sort of person I intend to cultivate in the future." He sat back and examined immaculately groomed fingernails. "Of course, your new job was a disappointment at first, but after we have control of Bristol and London the rest of the country should fall quickly and then who is to say where our boundaries lie." He smiled in his most winning fashion at his latest victim. "I don't rule out international expansion. What's the normal terminology? 'A unique opportunity to benefit from a ground-floor position with a new venture'? "

Kieran still failed to react and Herrick couldn't suppress an irritated twitch of the cheek. This was taking more effort than he had anticipated. Kieran was obviously a man with great self-control, a trait that would be useful to him later, but which Herrick was starting to find profoundly annoying.

"You have been coming home each weekend." It was a statement, rather than a question; Herrick had had him watched carefully. This was a delicate operation, choosing his next generation of vampires, and Kieran could have displayed any one of a number of character flaws that would have made the leader of the Bristol vampires reject him in the selection stages.

A curt nod.

Good, he was starting to respond. "Carry on doing that. Do you play golf?"

"Yes, but-"

"I'm more of a cricket man myself. At least I _was_, until an unfortunate incident with a cricket stump changed my views somewhat. Ah. You know to avoid sharpened wood, I take it? One of the basic rules I omitted to mention. Anyway, a game of golf is the perfect cover to give you a few hours to report back here to us. We're a close-knit group here, you see, and I'd like you to meet one of our number in particular - my right-hand man, if you like."

Kieran's eyes flickered towards the man at the door.

Herrick showed a glimmer of amusement and lowered his voice. "Oh, not Seth. He has his uses but also many limitations. No, Mitchell's not about much at the moment – he's having a few...personal issues, but I'm confident he'll be back any day now."

Herrick smiled in what he hoped was a reassuring manner and slapped the other man's shoulder. "But where are my manners? Here's me prattling on and you must be starving, eh? Let's find you some supper." Herrick's eyes suddenly became bottomless black pits and fangs erupted into his mouth. His companion recoiled wide-eyed with horror, looking in panic for the nearest exit, but the vampire Herrick had called Seth moved to block the doorway, lounging against the door frame with a sardonic smile but a threat in his eyes. The hand on Kieran's shoulder stopped being comradely: became restraining.

The black eyes returned to their normal blue and the fangs and snarl were replaced by a faintly mocking smile. "Oh, I don't think you want to do that. Relax. We've all been there. We'll help you through it. Before long you'll be able to control that response, switch it on and off at will as I did, but at first it will be pretty much involuntary, I'm afraid." He turned to the guardian of the doorway. "Seth, look lively and bring our guest in, will you? It's time for Kieran here to make his first kill." Herrick's gaze returned to Kieran, the grip on his shoulder tightening. "Theory is over, Kieran. Time for you to have your first practical lesson in being a vampire."


	7. Chapter 6

**OK "final" chapter has been split into two as I had rushed the ending a bit and sorting it out made the chapter too long, so here is what really is the penultimate chapter, honest.**

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><p>Mitchell bundled Kieran out of ICU and past a couple of bewildered staff, his hands clamped to Kieran's shoulders, all the time acutely aware of how close both of them had come to snapping.<p>

He thrust the other man down the corridor and shoved him into the gents, slamming Kieran back against the white tiles that lined the walls. "Rule one: you don't kill anyone on my turf." Pale blue eyes looked wretchedly back at him; good, he was getting back under control. Kieran slid miserably down the wall, landing in a crumpled heap on the floor, his elbows on his knees and his head buried in his hands.

Mitchell turned and leaned on his elbows against the door, panting as much from the effort of restraining himself from tearing a hole in Vicky's neck back in the ward as from his exertions in manhandling Kieran. The coolness of the door felt soothing against his forehead and he started to relax. Damn, that had been close. Damn, damn, damn.

As his breathing subsided, he gave Kieran a withering look. "So, suppose you tell me all about it."

"Tell you about what?" Kieran's voice was hoarse and strained.

"Well how about we start with the cold skin, taste for blood and lack of a fucking _heartbeat_ and work from there," spat Mitchell. He was in no mood to play games. After Lauren and Becca, a third nurse meeting an unfortunate end could have been disastrous for him – not to mention her – especially with the clean-up network in disarray after Herrick's demise.

"Mitchell?" Vicky's voice came from outside. "What's going on? Mitchell, is everything all right?"

Shit! Why'd she have to come looking for them? "Don't move," snarled Mitchell at the pitiful heap on the floor under the washbasins. "Don't you even _think_ of moving."

Mitchell eased himself round the door of the gents, blocking Vicky's view of the interior, although he saw her try to glance past him to see what had become of Kieran. He hoped he looked more composed than he felt, although he suspected he didn't – probably even more rumpled than usual.

"What the hell are you _doing_?" hissed Vicky. "That's a visitor you just assaulted. What if he makes a complaint? 'Not here'? What was _that_ about?"

"He was about to throw up, Vicks." Her eyebrow raised at the casual abbreviation of her name, but let it go. "You don't do this job for long without learning to read the signs. I thought you could do without norovirus pebble-dashed all over critical care and I could sure do without the cleaning up of it. I got him in here just in time – he's been puking his guts up big time." He jerked his head down the corridor. "Send visitors to the toilets down the way there till I get the chance to clean and disinfect these, yes? Oh, and find me a closed for cleaning cone from somewhere, will ya?"

"Is he...will he be OK?"

"Yeah, I'm on it. I'm a bloke, Vicky. You don't get to be my age without seeing a few fellas chucking up in the bog, you get me? In fact, if they make it as far as the sink you count it a blessing."

Vicky pulled a face. "Christ, Mitchell, you scared me; I thought you were beating him up or something. And I thought I saw... Never mind, I'll get that cone for you."

"Cheers. I'll get reception to call him a taxi home. Don't you worry about him."

He ducked back into the gents, where Kieran's self-control seemed to have returned. Mitchell was on the receiving end of an appraising stare. "You're a vampire too?" Kieran ventured.

"Yes, and you just nearly made my life bloody difficult," growled Mitchell, dragging Kieran to his feet by his shirt front. "So suppose you tell me what's going on? What are you doing here?"

Kieran lurched against the nearest washbasin, turning on the cold tap and splashing water over his face, gasping at the cold, then cupping his hands and gulping down a few mouthfuls. Water dripped from his face, and he wiped it away with a sleeve. _That would have been blood_, thought Mitchell with a shudder. Kieran leaned heavily on the sides of the basin, staring bleakly at where his reflection should have been. "That's my wife in there. She was in an accident – my little girl died."

"You're Christina's husband. Thank God for that." That should make Mitchell's job a bit easier. A vampire couldn't very well scoff at the idea of ghosts now, could he? And at least vampires could _see_ ghosts.

Kieran looked sharply up, "But how did you...? Wait a minute, that nurse called you Mitchell. I've heard of you. The vampires at the funeral parlour talked about you all the time. Herrick said you'd be back but you were never there when I was."

"Herrick? You know...knew Herrick?"

"He changed me – a few months ago. He said he was recruiting people who could be useful to him – people in key jobs or with influence of some sort."

Mitchell swore profusely, his fist rattling the stall door on its hinges. "Herrick's damn recruitment drive – you were part of that?" Herrick and his damn fool plan to take over the world. Look where that had got him.

"I guess so. I'd check in every week or two – tell the wife I was playing golf and head off to the funeral parlour – but it got harder and harder to come home. Christina was suspecting something was wrong. She thought I was ill – had me booked in for a well man check. Can you imagine what the results from that would have looked like?" Kieran managed a wan smile and jerked a thumb at Mitchell's scrubs. "You might want to do something about that, by the way. It looks...you know."

Mitchell looked down at the watermark on his scrubs, the mid-blue turned to dark by the spilt cooler water. "Shit, it looks like I've wet meself." He turned on the hand drier and tried to angle the nozzle towards the splash. Despite himself, Kieran chuckled at the bizarreness of the situation.

"So, what do we do now? I have a feeling I'm going to need your help dealing with all this. I'm a bit...lost, you know."

"Yeah, becoming a vampire isn't your usual lifestyle change, is it? And we need you too, mate. More than you know."

ooooooooo

"I didn't dare go near Christina when I came home; I was too scared that if I did I'd end up killing her." Kieran sent a quick look at Mitchell. "You know what I mean. She accused me of having a girlfriend in Brussels – she got really distraught, yelling and screaming at me - and I didn't deny it too much. Can you imagine what that was like? Letting the wife that I loved more than anything think I was having an affair because it was easier than telling her what was really happening?"

Kieran was continuing the story back at the pink house and Annie and Mitchell watched his face intently, the two men clutching beer bottles cold from the fridge. Mitchell in particular understood Kieran's dilemma and listened in fascinated horror, his bottle poised half way to his lips, the story reflecting so many he had heard over the years.

Upstairs, George waited with Rosie until the right moment came to tell Kieran why they were taking such an interest in him. George had hared home at the end of their shift, warned by Mitchell that Kieran would be on his way shortly. Kieran had taken Annie being a ghost in his stride – ghosts were also undead and so only one step removed from vampires, he had reasoned, only paling slightly – but they had thought introducing a werewolf might be a step too far at this delicate stage of the game. As for what had become of his daughter – the groundwork had to be laid patiently before giving Kieran the shock of his life.

Kieran stopped talking abruptly, tracing a pattern in the condensation with his finger then picking absently at the label of the bottle. He was finding it difficult to meet the eyes of the strangers who were listening silently to him recount his tale of love and loss. His hand was trembling and Annie reached out to cover his hand with hers, Mitchell noticed. Having Annie with him for this part had been the right decision; she always seemed to know what to do in these situations.

"Before too long it had an effect at work, too," Kieran continued, taking a deep breath and squaring his shoulders, "Not just on the actual work I was doing, concentration and so on, but not wanting to shake anyone's hand in case they noticed how cold it was. Not wanting to use the lifts in case the closeness of all those bodies set me off. Not wanting to go for the drinks after work in case anyone asked any awkward questions about my private life. So I handed in my notice and soon after that I never went home again either. One time I went home I found myself considering changing Christina and Rosie – the perfect little vampire family, can you imagine? – so it was safer that way. A clean break."

"But your family?" Annie broke in. "They didn't know you were leaving your job? What were you going to do?" Rosie had certainly believed her father still to be in the job that had taken him away from them.

"Oh, I didn't tell them. I'd just about worked my notice when this all happened and I'd got a job lined up waiting on tables already. I did a bit of waiting when I was in college. It wouldn't pay the rent on the flat where I staying - that was far too flash for a waiter's wages - but I figured I'd find a bedsit somewhere. The waiting job was cash in hand, so once I'd moved I could more or less disappear if I needed to; Brussels is a big place, after all. The job wasn't in any of the fancy restaurants that my old colleagues would go to – just a bog standard touristy one where my English would come in useful – so no danger there. I was trying to look like nothing was wrong - trying to look...human."

Mitchell's face had become more and more strained as Kieran told his story and he drained his beer and jumped to his feet. "I need to pee." He took the stairs two at a time in his haste.

"Did I say something? Have I upset him somehow?" Kieran's voice had a brittle edge and Annie's hand closed on his again.

"That's why Mitchell cleans in a hospital," she said quietly. "Staying under the radar. Working in jobs where he can stay anonymous and no-one will ask to see qualifications. That's why the three of us live together, so we can have some sort of normal life in a normal neighbourhood. Watch a bit of telly, phone out for pizza, go to the pub – that sort of thing. I think he was just shocked at how quickly you'd got to that stage – it's taken him decades, but Herrick has supported him mostly, since he's been a vampire. He'll be back once he's had time to think about it a bit."

"He was pretty close to Herrick then? I got that impression from the others." A sudden thought struck him. "Three of you? Someone else lives here?"

"Yes, there's George; he's upstairs. We thought it would be easier if you met us one at a time rather than as a job lot." Annie's eyes flickered over his face as she said cautiously. "George is a werewolf."

"A werewolf? Like in that John Landis movie?" He snorted and took a chug from his beer bottle. His shoulders shook as he chuckled to himself, then stopped sharply when he realised Annie wasn't laughing with him. He stared intently at her. "Oh my God." His face asked the question and she nodded almost imperceptibly. "Oh...my...fucking... You're not kidding, are you? Jesus!"

Annie made as if to speak to him, but he held up a hand, silencing her with a gesture. "I'm sorry. This all just got a bit hard to process. Vampires are bad enough, but ghosts and werewolves as well. Shit. Can you give me a minute?" He leaned back against the cushions of the sofa and closed his eyes wearily.

Annie watched him sadly. They'd had months, years, even decades to come to terms with what they were. This poor guy had been smacked between the eyes with ghosts and werewolves in the space of twenty minutes. No wonder he was shell shocked.

A creak at the top of the stairs betrayed Mitchell's reappearance. He came slowly down the staircase, not bounding down with his usual enthusiasm. His look appealed to Annie for understanding. "I'm sorry, I just needed a moment to get myself back together." Annie nodded sympathetically, holding her hand out to him. He grasped it gratefully and raised his eyebrows at Kieran, a question in his face.

"I just told Kieran about George. I think it's been a bit of a shock to him."

"Ah. The werewolf thing? Awkward."

"Can I meet him?" Kieran opened his eyes and stared from one to the other. "Hell, I might as well collect the set, while I'm here. Get my werewolf badge too."

"Top man," Mitchell stepped across and squeezed Kieran's shoulder, then went to the foot of the stairs and called up. "George! Could you come down here a minute?"

George joined them downstairs. A more unlikely werewolf than George Sands would be hard to imagine and that thought was written all over Kieran's face as George shuffled uncomfortably under his scrutiny, peering back at him from behind his glasses. Mitchell was acutely aware of Kieran's nose wrinkling as his vampire senses detected the distinctive smell of werewolf. Kieran might not have met a werewolf before, but he would know another if he met one.

George stretched out his hand awkwardly, fumbling for words, and Kieran got to his feet to greet him. "Hi. I'm George. And you must be...Kieran. Rosie's dad. She's a great kid."

Mitchell groaned. He wasn't supposed to mention Rosie. Not yet. Groundwork, George. Groundwork.

"You...you know Rosie? All of you? But...how? I've never met you before. How do you know my daughter? What's going on?" Kieran looked at them each in turn, then swivelled to stare accusingly at Mitchell. "This hasn't happened by accident, has it? You didn't just bump into me in ICU. What the hell is going on here?"


	8. Chapter 7

**Last chapter. I've enjoyed doing this one and hope you've enjoyed it too. If you have, leave a review. If you haven't, what the heck are you doing reading the 8th part of it - you should have given up on it by now! Thanks for reading. **

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><p>"I think you should sit down," said Mitchell, resting a hand on Kieran's arm.<p>

Kieran shook it off, staring Mitchell down. "Don't tell me to sit down. I want to know what's going on. I _demand_ to know what's going on."

The three housemates exchanged uneasy glances. George's said as clear as day, 'not me, I just met him' and Mitchell's managed to convey 'you're much better at this sort of thing than I am'. Annie sighed. It looked like it was down to her; she supposed she did know Rosie better than the others.

"Mitchell met Rosie in the hospital, Kieran," said Annie softly. "When she died, Rosie didn't fully pass over and we found her and brought her here to keep her safe. We've been looking after her till we could find how to help her through to the afterlife. She's a ghost, Kieran."

"A ghost?" Kieran sat heavily down on the sofa, the three others bracing themselves for disbelief, shock, distress – almost anything but what followed. A slow smile spread over Kieran's face. "But that's marvellous; she can come with me." He beamed, showing white, even teeth. "I can't hurt her any more and I can look after her. We can be together always. I can have my little girl back."

"Kieran, no," Mitchell stepped forward, alarmed. "It may seem the ideal solution now, but think about it. Think about the way we live – about the way you know your life will be now – and ask yourself if that's any way for an eight year old to be living. She will be eight years old for _ever_. People won't be able to see her, but they'll be able to see you, and eventually they will ask why you don't age. You'll have to keep moving from place to place and she'll have nothing: no school, no friends. And you won't be able to hide what you are from her for an eternity. Annie says she has her suspicions about me and she's only been here two or three days. Kieran, life isn't easy when you're a vampire, you can't take care of a kid too."

There was a shocked gasp from the man in front him and all eyes turned to the staircase. Rosie slowly descended, face stricken and contorted with the effort of holding back tears.

"Daddy?" She crept towards Annie and clung to the top of her leg, Annie stroking her hair to comfort her. "I heard your voice upstairs, when you shouted."

"Rosie, darling," Kieran reached out to her but stopped when she recoiled from him, holding tighter to Annie, her eyes round and fearful. "Oh my God. Don't be scared, Rosie, it's Daddy."

"You're a vampire. I heard Mitchell say it. Like on Young Dracula and stuff. You are, aren't you? And so are you." She turned wide blue eyes to Mitchell. "I knew you were something scary." Mitchell looked back silently, wishing he knew what to say to make this easier for her; figuring he was best saying nothing at all. "I could feel there was something strange about you when I met you. You felt like he did when he came to visit the last time. When he hurt me." Her fingers unconsciously went to the part of her arm that she had shown Annie.

Kieran choked back a sob. "I didn't mean to hurt you. I just...I couldn't help myself. You just... I..." His voice tailed away as his daughter stayed concealed behind Annie's leg, the other ghost's hand resting protectively on her head.

"I think you both need some time to get used to this," Annie murmured, looking to Mitchell for support, but even he with his decades of experience had nothing like this to fall back on for help.

"Vampires don't have to be bad, darling," continued Kieran, ignoring Annie's attempts to defuse things. "I can still be your Daddy. I can still look after you."

"A vampire's life is full of secrets, Kieran. This is only the first of many. You can't even think about keeping her with you or it will get worse and worse." Mitchell's voice was filled with urgency. "There are so many things I haven't even told these guys and they are the best friends I've ever had."

"I know," Rosie nodded, ignoring Mitchell's interruption, "Mitchell has helped Annie look after me. I don't think he likes me very much, but he's looked after me anyway. He's not a bad person, I don't think." She looked shyly up at him, disarming him – he hadn't expected that verdict from Moaning Myrtle.

"You don't know me too well yet, kid," mumbled Mitchell, lapsing back into silence at a savage glance from Annie. "What?" he mouthed at her, as she rolled her eyes back at him. And again, "What?" towards George who was looking at him in disbelief.

"Something really bad happened to me, Rosie," Kieran squatted close to her, getting down to her level and talking eye to eye to her. "Something very bad indeed and I didn't ask for it to happen. But I never stopped loving you and Mummy. I'd never have left you if I could have helped it; I wanted to come home, but I just couldn't."

"But you hurt me," she whispered, teardrops welling in her eyes. This time Annie didn't think she meant the bruising to her arm but something much deeper than that.

"I'm sorry," Kieran barely breathed, tears starting to fall down his cheeks. "Oh baby, you don't know how sorry I am. I would have told you if I could, but I couldn't. I promise I couldn't. It was easier if I just left you and mummy alone to forget about me."

"But you left us. You just left us and you didn't say goodbye. You didn't tell us why or anything. And mummy misses you. If you could have told us something, instead of just disappearing. At least I know now, but are you ever going to tell Mummy? She won't even have me with her now." Rosie's voice finally failed as she thought of her mother all alone, and the bitter tears started to fall.

"Oh darling," and as Kieran moved towards her once more, she went to him, arms outstretched. If he winced slightly as he realised how insubstantial she was none of them commented on it, and they all tried carefully to look anywhere else than at the father and daughter reconciliation unfolding beside them.

"Look," said George breathlessly and on the wall behind them, near the chimney breast, a white door had appeared. Light seeped from round the edges and there on the door they could see the plaque: Rosie's Room.

"I needed to know why you went, Daddy," she sniffed, "why you left us without saying goodbye. I can go now. Annie's told me about my door and now I can be properly dead and when you and Mummy die we can all be together again: Annie says so."

Kieran was staring at the door in horror. "No! Rosie, don't!" He tried to hold her tightly, to squeeze her to him, but even now she seemed less material somehow, as if she was getting ready to go. "We can be together. I'll look after you, I _promise_. Only don't go – I can't bear to lose you."

"You haven't lost me, Daddy. You just got me back. We'd never have seen each other again, but this way we got to say goodbye properly." Her eyes brightened. "I want to go. Really I do. I've seen Annie and she's sad a lot of the time. Lonely too. I don't want to end up like that, Daddy. Please let me go."

Annie ushered George and Mitchell through to the kitchen, leaving Kieran and Rosie deep in conversation, her blonde head close to his darker one, as the door hung next to them, light creeping round its edges - a foreboding presence in their midst. Annie turned to say gently, "Don't leave it too long will you, Rosie? I left mine like that once and by the time I came back it had gone. Don't leave yourself in limbo, if you do want to go."

George and Mitchell sat glumly at the table while Annie bustled about in her own special way. Occasionally she would glance over at the door, wondering what was going on in the room beyond. For a while they could hear the low hum of conversation next door, then a few snatches of louder, more emotional voices and then Rosie appeared in the doorway.

She wanted to say goodbye to them before leaving. She hugged each of them, even Mitchell, and clung to Annie as if her heart would break. The bravado slipping, she was once again a very small and very scared little girl, but she walked through the door bravely, pausing only to smile at Annie and wave weakly to Kieran. For a moment, Annie thought she'd turn, run back to them; that she and Kieran could work something out. Maybe Rosie could stay with them and he could visit at weekends? Mitchell and George wouldn't mind. Would they?

But Rosie bit her lip and walked into the light. For a moment she was silhouetted in the doorway, and then the door swung shut and closed with a gentle click.

ooooooooo

At the funeral at All Saint's a few days later, Christina sat in a wheelchair watching as a small coffin was lowered into the ground. She was desperately weak and pale, but she had insisted on attending and her parents were beside her, making sure she was comfortable, that the blanket over her knees was just so, that she wasn't overtiring herself. Kieran's parents were there too. Of course they should be, Christina had insisted – they were Rosie's grandparents and even if Kieran had vanished again – no more visits to the hospital - they needed to be there to say goodbye. They couldn't help their son's behaviour; they were grieving too.

George had joined the mourners, discreetly standing to the back of the ranks of friends and relatives who had turned out to celebrate a young life lost. A few of her classmates were there, solemn as they came to grips with their first experience of death. Her headmistress and a few past teachers too, since it was still the holidays.

Annie was beside George, unseen, but crying raw, desperate tears. She had become so fond of the little girl – had harboured faint hopes that she could stay, become a fourth housemate, be company for her. Sad and lonely, Rosie had said, and that description ate away at her. Was that how she had seemed to Rosie? Did she seem that way to George and Mitchell too? She hoped not, but she wondered if she would be as accepting of her door, if it ever came again. A part of her longed for it – for an end to it all. How would she ever cope with the decades and decades that Mitchell had endured?

Mitchell stood by the wall, watching from outside the graveyard, unable to set foot on consecrated ground and uncomfortable even with what he was seeing and hearing from a distance. The figure beside him was shrouded in a big coat, trying not to be recognised by parents and in-laws, absorbed in his own private grief and also barred by his nature from the graveyard where his only child was being buried.

When the service was over and Christina had dissolved into tears, her mother holding her tightly in her sorrow, Mitchell laid an understanding hand on Kieran's sleeve. "Time to go, before anyone spots you. Come on," and he led the man back to where his Volvo was parked along the lane from the church.

Kieran stumbled alongside him, half numb with shock. He had struggled to come to terms with Rosie leaving him, but the little girl had been as determined in death as she had been in life and she had gently but firmly got her own way.

Kieran took one last look back to the graveside and scanned the hearse and the black ceremonial cars which were being loaded with family and friends, off to a wake that he couldn't attend. One last look at the parents who were struggling to deal with their son's desertion: with his disappearance. He slipped into the passenger seat.

George and Annie joined them shortly, sliding into the back of the car, Annie still mopping tears from her cheeks and George looking glum. "It was beautiful, mate, could you hear any of it?" George asked.

"A little," replied Kieran. "Not all of it, but enough. Thanks."

"Where will you go?" asked Mitchell. They had offered him a place to stay for a while, until he got on his feet, but he had refused. "I don't know. Back to Belgium, maybe. The temptation to see Christina would be less if I was far away."

ooooooooo

He had arrived back at ICU a couple of hours after Rosie had left, the nurses looking sidelong at him, as if expecting him to start throwing up at any second. It hadn't been norovirus, he assured them; the cleaner guy had way over-reacted. He was fine; maybe a dodgy burger or something? They tried to keep him out but he was insistent – couldn't they see he was fine? Norovirus would have laid him flat for days.

Maybe there was something in the theory that if people weren't charismatic before they became vampires that they became that way afterwards, as the nurses were worn down, and eventually allowed him in dressed in scrubs and gloves. "So much as a cough and you're out of here," he'd been warned.

Kieran had recounted the whole tale to Christina, from beginning to end, omitting nothing. He had bared his soul, assuming he even had one left. She had stirred in her sleep when he got to the part about his transformation into a vampire and again when he had cried about leaving; about how he thought it was best for all of them; about how sorry, how truly sorry he was that it had come to this.

"It's nice that you come and talk to her," one of the nurses on duty had beamed. Not Emilia, nor even Vicky. He didn't have the heart to make a note of the name on her badge; he wouldn't be back. "She's conscious some of the time now, you know - lucid, even. She might well be hearing what you are telling her."

"Will she remember?" he had asked, and the nurse had shrugged and left.

As he bent to whisper in her ear the name of a restaurant in Brussels where an Englishman down on his luck could earn a few Euros of an evening, he was sure her eyes flickered open for a moment and the hint of a smile crossed her face. Maybe she would come looking for him. Maybe she'd not even remember he had been there. But either way, he had kept his last promise to Rosie.


End file.
